Preface - A Dedication to Paulo Freire

This issue of the Journal
of Pedagogy, Pluralism and Practice is dedicated to the memory of Paulo Freire
who died on May 2, 1997 at the age of 75. Paulo Freire is the author of Pedagogy
of the Oppressed, The Politics of Education, Pedagogy of the City, Pedagogy of
Hope and many other books that have created a radical discourse on liberatory
education and have influenced teachers, theorists and cultural workers
throughout the world. His last book, Pedagogia da Autonomia: Saberes necessários
à prática educativa, is not yet translated in English, but is expected soon,
possibly entitled Pedagogy of Freedom. The Portuguese text is reviewed in this
issue of the Journal. In the early 1960's, Paulo Freire joined liberatory
education and political action in the context of a successful adult literacy
program in Brazil that enabled marginalized peasants to gain some measure of
political power. Following the military coup in 1964, he was imprisoned and
later exiled. He worked and taught in Chile, the United States and Switzerland,
before returning to Brazil in 1979, where he continued to write and transform
the nature of thought and action in education.

As an educator,
social theorist and philosopher, Paulo Freire has offered a truly democratic and
liberatory vision of education based in experience, dialogue, reflection and
critique. Reflecting humbly on his writing and his travels all over the world,
he has called himself a "vagabond of the obvious" who works to join theory and
practice to understand education in terms of cultural politics. "My utopian
dream has to do with a society that is less unjust, less cruel, more democratic,
less discriminatory, less racist, less sexist" (Pedagogy of the City, p. 115).

Literacy is central to Paulo Freire's work. "Reading the word," he
shows us, is dependent upon "reading the world." Literacy is understood not
merely as skills or job preparation, but as "critical literacy" that enables us
to more fully read and to transform (to write) the world, to recognize
injustice, to create democracy in collective struggle against the forces that
oppress and marginalize the lives of the poor, of racial, ethnic and linguistic
minorities, and of women and men throughout society.

Paulo Freire
recently visited Boston and Cambridge, and spoke at Lesley College on April 3,
1997. On that occasion he chose to depart from his customary practice of
engaging in a free ranging dialogue with those present. Instead, he wished to
tell us about his new book, Pedagogia da Autonomia: Saberes necessários à
prática educativa, which was being published in Brazil in a format intended to
keep the price to R$3. It would be, he hoped, a book that might be widely read
and not be unavailable to the poor who have a great stake in the future of
education in Brazil. During the talk, he discussed some of the central concerns
of the book which, in a sense, provides a review and reaffirmation of his
thinking about education with emphasis upon a theory of teaching and learning
and the dialogic relationship between teachers and learners.

The
first essay of this section of the Journal is based upon that meeting at Lesley
College last April. The authors, who participated in hosting the event, met
several months later to record a conversation in which they recalled and
reflected upon Paulo Freire's words. Their purpose was to engage in a critical
dialogue with each other and with their understanding of Paulo Freire's work.
That dialogue was later transcribed and edited to a form suitable for
re-presentation as a "written" essay, which might also fit within the space
limitations of the Journal.

The second essay, which appears both in
Portuguese and English, offers a review of Pedagogia da Autonomia: Saberes
necessários à prática educativa. The authors who are now educators in
Massachusetts were born and raised in the Açores.

The third essay is
a personal reflection on reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The author has been
a nurse and an educator of nurses at Roxbury Community College. Her essay
examines her experience and that of her students as re-lived through a critical
reflection deeply influenced by reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed twenty five
years after its original publication.

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